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never.no First With Real-Time Instagram(R) Integration Into Social TV Broadcasts

OSLO, Norway -- Dec. 6, 2012 -- never.no today announced that it has integrated Instagram(R) into its flagship Interactivity Suite (IS), a toolkit for creating the technical backbone of interactive broadcasts and digital marketing campaigns. Now broadcasters that use the never.no IS will be able to push and pull data from Instagram into their live programming and companion apps.

"Instagram has become a wildly popular form of social media, and we believe it will only continue to grow in relevance, which is why we've upgraded IS to include it," said Zachary Weiner, director of marketing at never.no. "We maintain an aggressive development schedule so that we can stay ahead of what's happening in the marketplace. We want to make sure that broadcasters can bring their viewers into the broadcast, wherever they are and however they want to interact with social media."

The Instagram integration gives broadcasters the ability to use crowd-sourced photos and images in multiple areas of TV content. This ability to launch visual images into live programming moves beyond simply incorporating individual comments, greatly increasing viewer engagement and the power of social TV. The functionality is especially relevant for news shows, which could allow individual watchers to contribute photos they have taken at the scene of the news.

Adding Instagram to IS creates the potential for entirely new models of participation TV and even sponsorships. For example, a broadcaster could request photos of viewers drinking a particular sponsor's beverage, awarding a prize to the viewer whose photo is chosen to be displayed live. That sort of arrangement would increase viewer interaction and ensure more eyes stay on the broadcast, which in turn is good for advertisers. Instagram could also inspire other forms of programming, such as game shows that require users to chime in with pictures of specific things. In this way, contestants can participate in the game show without needing to be in front of the cameras.

The Instagram integration is part of never.no's IS, a platform that supports true participation TV by enabling viewers to influence a broadcast in real time, as well as allowing them to interact with one another and the rest of the world. Using IS, a broadcaster can effortlessly aggregate user-generated content into programming from social media sites such as Twitter(TM), Facebook, and now Instagram, and build synchronized companion apps that enable viewers to interact with their televisions using an iPad(R), tablet, PC, or smartphone.